August 2008 - Posts
The flame is out, the bars in the Sanlitun nightclub district are undoubtedly headed for a drunken rendezvous with dawn, the Beijing Games are over.
They were simply marvelous. The venues were grand, the competition Olympian, and the city a most gracious host and the beers reasonably priced. Olympic volunteers are the grease that makes everything work. In every host city, they are always the most friendly and helpful people you’ll meet anywhere. But the hundreds of thousands who worked here for nothing more than their nifty uniforms and free water and sandwiches are beyond compare.
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On the eve of the Games, I wrote a column listing seven story lines you could count on in Beijing and two pregame fears that wouldn’t pan out. In the interest of journalistic integrity – something I wouldn’t be as interested in if I’d been wrong about everything – I thought I’d go back and see how close my predictions were to what actually happened.
Let’s start with the story lines I guaranteed would be big.
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The questions about the ages of the Chinese female gymnasts aren’t going to go away. I’ve said before that if they’ve got the required documents — and the IOC and FIG, the governing body of gymnastics, say they do — there’s nothing anybody can do about it. The documents may be forgeries concocted by the government, but good luck proving that in a country that isn’t known for its openness.
I don’t know the ages of He Kexin, Jiang Yuyuan and Yang Yilin. They may not even know at this point. But I do know that calendar age isn’t the real issue here. Physical age is.
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IOC president Jacques Rogge's criticism of Usain Bolt's behavior is the right sentiment at the wrong time.
What’s wrong about it is that it seems to single out Bolt, a Jamaican, over all the others who have behaved in similar fashions. Jamaicans are understandably outraged by this and are right to wonder why the Americans who perfected the act got away unscathed. CONTINUED >>
On the eve of the Beijing Games, IOC President Jacques Rogge rallied up the media to speak of many things, one of them being drug testing. "Based on the number of doping tests in Beijing, you can expect 30 to 40 positive cases,” he said.
So far, the number of positive tests is four with one more pending. A North Korean marksman lost a medal when he tested positive for beta blockers. A Vietnamese female gymnast was bounced for taking a PMS drug. A Spanish cyclist was sent packing for a positive test, and a Greek hurdler was also invited to leave and not come back.
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Here’s one export the United States really didn’t need to send to China – the beanball.
You’ve probably seen the video by now of the U.S.-China baseball game that featured two collisions at home plate and five hit batsmen, including one American who was hit in the head. For that last one, we have to give total credit to former major league player and manager Jim Lefebvre, who’s managing the Chinese Olympic team.
The reason you have to look to Lefebvre is that China is new to baseball, and playing dirty isn’t something that this country has ever been noted for. (Officials may fudge a birth certificate or two here and there to get underage gymnasts in, but their athletes play it by the rules.) It’s something the baseball team had to be taught.
Baseball doesn’t need this kind of nonsense.
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Families had this sort of problem in the Civil War, but I’d never heard of it in sports until now. Chris Kaman, Los Angeles Clippers center and third-generation American, is playing for Germany in the Olympics. And his father was rooting for him to lose.
LeRoy Kaman is the offended father who thinks that patriotism trumps blood. When Kaman accepted Dirk Nowitzki’s offer to apply for a German passport and join Mannschaft Deutschland, LeRoy told his son, “You're not German, you're an American citizen.”
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BEIJING – Either amateur boxing finds a way to fairly judge fights, or the International Olympic Committee has to dump the sport.
I’m not saying this because a couple of Americans – most recently Demetrius Andrade – are whining about being hosed by the officials at the Workers Gymnasium. I’m saying it because the judging stinks.
There is near-universal agreement on that. Eastern Europeans, Great Britain and Cuba are among those who have joined the Americans in saying the judges are incompetent, biased, on the take or all of the above. If Cuba agrees with the United States, you know it’s serious.
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BEIJING – It’s become a knee-jerk reaction, and it’s getting more than a bit absurd. Michael Phelps dominates swimming like no one ever has, so automatically people suggest that he must be doping.
There is no evidence for the allegation. Phelps has volunteered to be tested more than anyone else by more sophisticated methods of detection. Under the program, his blood and urine samples will be preserved so that they can be tested again when better detection technology is introduced. You don’t agree to that if you’re hiding something. CONTINUED >>
I lost my wallet last Tuesday. As fun experiences go, it ranks up there with root canals and prostate exams, except the discomfort is mental instead of physical.
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BEIJING – I don’t know how old He Kexin, the 4-foot-8, 73-pound princess of the Chinese women’s gymnastics team is. Maybe she’s 14, as local newspaper reports said she was earlier this year. And maybe she’s 16 as her passport claims she is.
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So far, just one U.S. team and one individual have come to the Olympics talking about how they were going to win. They are the women’s gymnastics team and boxer Rau’shee Warren.
Warren’s gone, the victim of a brain-lock in his first boxing match. And the gymnasts are going home with silver medals, beaten by their own mistakes and by a superior Chinese team.
There’s a lesson in this, though I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for anyone to learn it. I’m grateful for that, because players and teams that shoot their mouths off are one of the things that make sports so riveting.
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American divers used to dominate the Olympics. Not anymore.
Three events are in the books here – synchronized women’s from platform and springboard and men’s platform synchronized. The best American finish is fourth. The worst Chinese finish is first.
And it doesn't look like Team USA will derail China anytime soon.
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To the naked eye, the finish of the greatest relay ever swum looked like a dead heat. To the electronic touch pads on the pool wall, it was an easy call: Jason Lezak touched first for the United States in the 4x100 freestyle.
The margin in time was .08 of a second. To me, it begged the question: How much was that in inches?
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For all practical purposes, Ryan Lochte and Laszlo Cseh are just as fast as Michael Phelps. Put any of them in a pool near you and he would be the fastest and most graceful mammal you’ve seen in any water this side of Sea World. Put them all in together, and they’re separated by absurdly small bits of time.
And yet when they get together, Phelps always wins. That doesn’t mean he wins most of the time or nine times out of 10 or 99 times out of 100. He always wins.
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It’s hard to believe, but even with the approximately 1.3 gazillion hours of broadcasts that NBC is presenting of these games, there are some things you won’t see on television.
The warm-up for the swimming sessions is one of those things.
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For fans, the Olympics revolve around the venues — the stadiums, arenas, swimming pools, fields, courses and tracks. For journalists, they revolve around the Main Press Center — the MPC.
For three weeks, it is home for thousands of writers and photographers from around the world.
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Things are done differently in China, where old-fashioned pride and hard work made possible what will surely be the most visually stunning Olympic Games ever. Just take a look at the enormous stainless-steel tracery of the centerpiece “Bird’s Nest” stadium and you'll get a sense of what the Chinese people have achieved in getting their country ready to play host.
And let's hope the work is respected and the venues remain a propaganda-free zone.
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After a one-day absence, the smog stomped in on big dragon’s feet again today. It wasn’t as bad as it had been on Monday, but it was bad enough to prompt another round of debate about whether Beijing’s now-famous inversion layer is going to ruin the Games.
May I suggest that we all get a grip, including those American cyclists who deplaned in Beijing on Tuesday wearing black masks as if they were here to rob a bank instead of compete in the Olympics.
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It was a blue-sky day today, bright and clear and beautiful, a perfect day for shopping.
This city is a shopper’s paradise, although getting what you want does require a lot of travelling. Different products are sold in different sections of the city, and they’re not close together. On my list were new eyeglasses and some custom-tailored clothes.
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BEIJING – This is one cool city. I mean that literally. China’s discovered air conditioning, and it can’t get enough of it.
The hotter it gets outside – and it gets Houston hot – the higher they crank the air conditioners.
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BEIJING – I’m not in Kansas anymore.
Yesterday, all I’d seen of Beijing was the ultramodern airport, freeways and the brand-new hotel in which I’m staying. I reported that I may as well have been in Kansas. Today, I finally got out of our little compound and went to Tiananmen Square and a few other neighborhoods. And it’s definitely not Kansas.
This is a ginormous city. It makes Manhattan look like a village. It sprawls in every direction for just about forever, and if you’re thinking about walking it, think again. Centers of interest are flung to the far corners of the compass. And it’s hotter than Houston.
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First impressions are important, and China gives a great one. I’ve been here only about eight hours, but if you asked what I think so far it that China is a very tidy nation.
It’s also been very efficient. The new airport is spacious, paved in polished granite, and as agreeable a place to get off a plane as you’ll find. There was no customs. Just a passport and visa check, an x-ray machine to run your baggage through and no one asking you if you packed your bags yourself and had them with you all the time.
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